


Runaway

by unkissed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bisexuality, Explicit Language, F/M, M/M, Multi, POV Second Person, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Theodore POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-20 06:39:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9479723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkissed/pseuds/unkissed
Summary: Theodore Nott will never be able to escape the casualties of war, no matter how far or fast he runs.  There will always be a blond boy with haunted grey eyes, following him to the very ends of the earth, even if only in Theodore's mind.In which Theodore Nott is an angsty international playboy, Draco Malfoy haunts his conscience, and the Slytherins try to pick up the pieces after the fall of Voldemort.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this several years ago, but never finished it. I hope that, by posting this WIP, I will actually get around to completing it.
> 
> This is dedicated to Draco_Amante and ColorfulStabwound, whose rich and deep characters helped shape my version of Theodore. Thank you for your friendship and your genius.
> 
> Rosaline Dolohov, Donovan Norrington, and Dashiel Norrington belong to Draco_Amante, and it is with humble reverence that I am using these original characters and parts of their timeline.

You’ve been riding the trains for a cumulative thirty-two hours. It’s been seventy-two hours since you left home with some muggle clothes, an empty journal, a self-inking quill, and enough money to last six months if you’re reckless, a year if you’re sensible.

 

What you’re doing now is probably the most reckless thing you’ve ever done in your life, and you’ve done some pretty rash life-altering things before this point. It is also the most sensible thing you’ve done in a while, which says more about the fucked-up world you’re leaving than your sense of responsibility.

 

You’re a seventeen-year-old runaway that nobody is looking for.

 

Your father told you that you could either fall in line like Malfoy’s boy, or get the hell out of his house. When you stormed out of your ancestral home with a two-fingered salute, he didn’t even stop you, so confident was he that either destiny or the Death Eaters would drag you back home. That fact makes you want to run away even harder, like a petulant, loveless child, pounding the earth with your own two feet. But your fear of getting irreversibly lost keeps you tied to the rails.

 

Even though nobody seems to care that you’re gone, you are still afraid that you’ll get caught – that you’ll get sucked back into the life you so resolutely rejected. You imagine masked, hooded figures following you like shadows, reaching their skeletal arms for you. You see them on train platforms as dark blurs that streak past you like smeared specters in your peripheral vision. You see them crossing the street, disappearing into the swell of pedestrians. Their forearms are bone white and bear the soot black mark you never want to see staining your own skin. But those looming figures aren’t really there. They are in your head. And you wonder how far you have to go before they stop tormenting your conscious nightmares.

 

So you ride, as far as you can, to the end of every line.

 

You take a wrong transfer that puts you in Bordeaux and sets you back a day because you can’t speak French with enough proficiency to ask the right questions. You curse the fact that _à l'ouest_ and _à l'est_ sound exactly the same to your ignorant ears. You haven’t gotten as far as you should have after three days and you can’t help but feel that Fate has you tethered to that manor house in Luckington with a rubber band – the further you go, the harder it is to break free.

You sleep as much as you can on the train, even when you ride during the day, so that you need not find a place to crash between transfers. You subsist on crisps and coffee and take up smoking when a bloke leaves his packet of fags behind on the seat beside you on the train from Paris to Frankfurt. When there aren’t any trains running, you sit on the platform, fill your lungs with smoke, and fill up the blank parchment of that journal with your fears and frustrations.

 

If you can make it to Prague, there will be a distant relative on your mother’s side who might be able to secure an international Portkey for you that will take you to Indonesia. And maybe you’ll finally be able to breathe. Maybe you’ll finally be free.


	2. Chapter 2

It is day four of your journey, and you are unsure of this number as you write it at the top of a fresh page in your journal. You think it’s Tuesday. You’ve miraculously made it to your mother’s aunt’s café in the wizarding enclave of _Kouzelník Mesto_ , hidden deep in the city of Prague. You are sitting at a rickety table nursing a mug of greasy coffee and a steaming bowl of _Kulajda_ – this is your third helping and Apolonia is more than happy to ladle out a fourth. You wonder if it really is the best mushroom soup you’ve ever had in your life or if you’re just starving. It could be both, and each one is a very good reason to stay with her for a while. She wipes a bit of soup from your chin with her apron and chuckles heartily. You manage a small smile. It’s the first time the corners of your mouth have done anything of the sort in months.

 

She takes your face firmly in her hands and gazes fondly upon you with a wistful expression on her wizened face. “You look just like Esperanza. _Smutná a krásná_.” She doesn’t bother to translate – it is probably her own personal musing that isn’t meant for your ears. But something about the solemn look in her eyes makes you wonder if it’s something bad. You force a brighter smile, even though the thought of your mother and your resemblance to her makes you miss her enough that you want to run back home just to curl up on her grave and cry.

 

Apolonia sighs and goes off on a rant in swift, colorful Czech. What she says last, in English, leads you to believe she’d just ripped your father a new one. “We should have kidnapped you both from that brute of a man you call your father a long time ago.”

 

Her words give you no comfort. The reality of your mother’s murder had been so finite. You had never once thought it could have gone another way. Until now. And part of you wants to take Apolonia by the shoulders and shake her for turning a blind eye. But the better part of you sees the sorrow and guilt in her face and you know she has been living with this guilt for nine years.

 

You stay in the flat above Apolonia’s café for another six days. And every day, she tries to convince you to stay longer, to learn Czech and plant roots here, in the town where your maternal grandmother was born and died. She makes you believe you could have a life here – that you belong here – tempting you with old family photographs of children with flowing dark hair and cerulean eyes, with warm soup and hearty dumplings, with stories of your mother painting St Vitus Cathedral and Charles Bridge on summer holidays. The rubber bands that fetter you to England pull hard when you think of those paintings that still hang in your bedroom.

 

You smoke a cigarette on the rooftop one night, marveling at the glittering lights of Prague, writing odes to the city’s beauty. One cigarette becomes five, and night turns to dawn when you wake up clutching your journal like a teddy bear with mist in your hair and an overcast sky above you. The sun fights to make an appearance between the grey clouds and renders the horizon lucent silver. The slate color of the heavens makes you think of a certain boy’s eyes. You see his eyes behind your own when they close.

 

You see his eyes staring at you from across the table in the Great Hall of Hogwarts – haunted, terrified, pained. His eyes beseech you – a silent cry for help. You turn away. You run away. But his eyes will always be there, reminding you exactly what you’re leaving behind. For as much as you tell yourself that you’re leaving nothing but sorrow and death behind you, you are also leaving him. You are leaving him there to rot alone in the Hell that would have also been yours, had you stayed. You are leaving him, more likely than not, to die.

 

You can justify yourself all you want and say that you hate him and that he deserves everything he gets. But it is a carefully constructed lie. He doesn’t deserve to be a pawn in a madman’s game any more than you do.

 

How the fuck are you going to live with yourself? How can you move on knowing that you left him behind, doomed to become a casualty of the impending war? You grab your knees and rock back and forth, sobbing like the child that you are, and you keep asking these questions. Your answer is in Apolonia’s safe. It has been there for the past two days. All you need to do is ask for it.

 

When you come down to the café with your rucksack slung over your shoulder, you don’t even have to say the words. She heaves a sigh, sheds a tear, packs you some lunch, and hands you a silk pouch. She gives you a hug that threatens to crush you before she takes your face into her hands like she had done the day you arrived.

 

“Your mother was as sad as she was beautiful. I see her in you,” she says softly.

 

It is these words that make you cry, more than the thought of leaving _real_ family behind, or leaving _anyone_ behind for that matter.

 

“Find your happiness, Theodore.”

 

You inwardly vow to do just that as you open the pouch, close your hand around the pink plastic flower inside, and leave the wizarding world and evil overlords and arsehole fathers and boys with haunted grey eyes forever.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

You spend your eighteenth birthday the way you entered the world – naked, screaming, and crying.

 

You’ve been island hopping in Southeast Asia for eight months, benefitting from the sunshine, the warm seas, and the kindness of fishermen. Learning to live in the muggle world has been easier to do, so far from cosmopolitan civilization. The locals in the little ocean-side villages had chalked up your ignorance and helplessness to your youth and to what they assume had been your city upbringing in England. They don’t know that you’re a country boy who can do magic, and they accept you despite a long, bloody history of failed European colonialism in the region. They understand that you’re on your own, without a Christian agenda, as some previous foreigners had been.

 

You teach English to the children in exchange for housing and food – which often consists of just a grass mat on the earthen-floor of a beach hut, fried fish, and heaps of sticky white rice on banana leaves. You rarely have to dip into your hidden stash of money, and you are quite content to live by the barter system. It’s a beautiful, uncomplicated life.

 

You are in Bali now. It’s the most populated and developed island you’ve visited since you left Jakarta. It’s touristy, and you look more like a visitor even though you’ve been living like a local for months. You can even speak the language – at least one of the dozen dialects, which is good enough for you to get by. When you flaunt your Indonesian savvy at the resort where you’re splurging for the night, it earns you perks that are usually only afforded to the wealthiest of foreign patrons.

 

You’ve been upgraded to a suite that’s perched on stilts above the tranquil shoreline. When you let it slip to the proprietor that it’s your birthday, though you lie flawlessly and tell her it’s your twenty-first, she gifts you with a bottle of champagne and a young masseuse named Sari.

 

It’s a classy establishment, and you’re thoroughly shocked when Sari’s hands wander beneath the towel that assumes to keep you decent during your deep tissue massage. You snatch her wrist away from your lap sharply, squeezing her wrist hard enough to make her cry out. You both apologize profusely to one another as if you’re bumbling adolescents stumbling through intimacy for the first time.

 

You haven’t been touched by a woman since Rosaline, and the ghosts of her vamp red fingernails still scratch deep gouges across your back whenever you think of her. And when you do think of her, which is more often than you’d like, you hear her voice echoing in your head telling you to _grow a pair_.

 

You’re still terribly uncomfortable sharing intimacy with women. It’s not that you’re uninterested in girls. You can appreciate female beauty as much as you appreciate men, though you tend to gravitate towards the latter. Sari is quite pretty, with miles of silky, black hair and sun-kissed skin, and had it not caught you off guard, you probably would’ve welcomed her advances under better circumstances.

 

You implore her politely to continue with the massage, sans the extra services, so you don’t have to send her away in embarrassment. You can’t blame her for doing what most of her clients ultimately want. While she kneads the muscles of your back, she compliments you on the clarity of your skin. You keep chatting with her to make the experience less awkward, and you find out that her husband has a particular interest in skin.

 

And that’s how, later that day, you end up crying and screaming whilst naked.

 

Sari’s husband, Tegu, is hunched over you, penetrating you repeatedly. Every time he touches you, it feels like fire in a very bad way. And you lament that you’re not nearly drunk enough for this as he pounds away ruthlessly and mercilessly despite your howls of pain. It’s your first - the first of what will some day be many. And like many things, your first hurts the most.

 

It doesn’t help that your very first tattoo is inflicted in the traditional Javanese way, with a needle-thin metal spike attached to a bamboo rod, tapped repeatedly with a stick. You imagine that you feel every drop of ink spitefully affixing itself permanently to your flesh with each bite of the needle. You’re sweating profusely, breathing erratically, and gritting your teeth to hold in your screams of agony. Tears sting your eyes and your vision goes in and out of focus as your consciousness wanes. You’re on the verge of fainting a few times, and when you look like Tegu’s losing you, he taps the needle harder to jolt you awake – and those are the times you allow yourself to scream uninhibitedly. The sound is swallowed by the billowing mosquito nets surrounding your luxury hut and by the hiss of the ocean.

 

You’re naked with a towel over your lap because Sari and Tegu convince you in your drunken, pain-addled haze that clothes are not part of the traditional Javanese tattooing ceremony. But you suspect, from the knowing glances they exchange, that they just enjoy watching your naked body squirm. They are quite amused by your antics it seems, but they have enough courtesy and empathy to soothe you tenderly with cool washcloths dipped in seawater and shots of rice moonshine.

 

The ordeal lasts two torturous hours that feel like days. You learn that, if this had been an actual Javanese coming-of-age tattooing rite, it would have lasted the better half of a day and resulted in two large tattoos, one on the front of each shoulder. But in your case, you’ve got one small _bunga terung_ tattoo on the underside of your left forearm – a spiral set inside a flower. Tegu explains that the spiral is the rope of your life that you are now entering as a man.

 

You can’t think of a better way to enter your adult life than to receive a mark that symbolizes Life, rather than a mark that embodies Death. It is the ultimate _fuck you_ to your father. To you, it heralds your arrival as a free man – you’re free from familial obligations, free from your dark past, and free to live your life the way you want to.

 

You spend the rest of the night sliding between Sari and Tegu on the sweat-soaked sheets of your bed, praising the open nature of marriage and the fluidity of sexuality in their culture with soft moans of pleasure. It is the most sexually liberated you’ve ever been, and you owe it to the cathartic tattooing rite as well as to generous amounts of alcohol. When you drift off to sleep with a wicked smile, you know you’ve just had the best sex of your life, even though you’ve had little to compare it to. It will be years before you top this experience.

 

Tonight is the most self-defining moment of all your eighteen years. And you will rush to document it in your journal before alcohol robs you of that memory.

 

When you wake up, sore in entirely novel ways in places you’ve never been sore before, reeling from a hangover, you still think it had been worth it. You know your life is your own. And you are ready to take on the world. No more hiding out in sleepy fishing villages circling the Java Sea.

 

Soon, you will embark a cruise liner on course for Australia. As you sail the Coral Sea to Sydney, never once will you think of what you’re leaving behind. You’re moving forward. You’re moving on.


	4. Chapter 4

It is the 25th of May when a double-headed golden eagle finds you at the beach in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. You are suiting up to go surfing in the Pacific Ocean. It is approximately 7:45 AM, and you are only aware of the time because you had planned to be at the beach this ungodly hour for high tide. You wonder what your muggle companions see when the massive two-headed bird lands on your surfboard, which stands like a fiberglass monolith in the sand. You know this bird. Her imposing size is menacing enough, but her presence is starkly ominous. Apolonia’s eagle would never travel halfway across the world to bring you good tidings.

 

You feed Andreja a piece of beef jerky from your rucksack and you swallow hard as you carefully remove the scroll of parchment from the eagle’s giant talon. Your first thought is of Death and you know you’re destined for Hell when your father immediately comes to mind like a wish. You unroll the missive. Apolonia’s handwriting looks hastily scrawled and, judging from the dark smudges, she hadn’t the time to do a thorough drying charm before she’d sent it off.

 

_20 May, 1998_

_Dearest Theodore,_

_I hope this letter finds you soon and finds you well. I had not heard from you since your postcard from Rio a month ago, and I am not sure if you are still in that part of the world. Andreja is a strong lady and I’m sure she will find you wherever you may be._

_I will not, as you Brits say, mince words. Your mother had always appreciated my bluntness. So you have my apologies if this comes out somewhat cold to your young eyes._

_Your father is dead. He took a hex to the chest and probably suffocated to death when his lungs collapsed._

_The official report, of which I have a copy, says he was subdued by an Auror at the Battle of Hogwarts on the 2 nd of May and immediately succumbed to his injuries. _

_I hope you have not been following news of the horrible war that has plagued your home country since you left it – I know that if you had been reading about it in the papers, you would not be so happy as it seemed in your postcards. Ignorance is bliss, they say - nevědomost je sladká. But at least the war is over, Potter lives, and Voldemort has been defeated. Europe is still a mess, however._

_Mr Hortence Morrissey from the British Ministry of Magic came here looking for you, as he put it, “to dispense the entirety of Mr Nott’s seized assets to his oldest living blood relative.” Did you know that your bastard of a father wrote you out of his will and left everything to his first wife? It doesn’t matter now – his first wife also died in the war and the Ministry is seeing to it that you get every galleon of both your father’s and your mother’s estate. They need to question you before releasing it to you. I tried to reason with the gentleman and told him you are a good boy – that you left England because you did not support You Know Who and refused to fight for him along side your father. I suppose he needs to hear it from you. Mr Morrissey did not mention it, but it would be wise to have a lawyer present when they question you. I will secure one for you._

_My condolences go out to you, dear boy, for the passing of your father. But if I know you like I think I know you, you are not very sad to learn this news. You are welcome to return to Prague to sort out your father’s estate, and likely his debts – I’m sorry this task falls upon you. I will do all I can to help, even if it means bringing you back to England. I will do everything in my power to make sure you won’t have to stay there for long if you don’t want to, and my guess is that you don’t._

_Be well, dearest Theodore. Please, if you could be so kind, feed Andreja a steak before sending her back with your reply. She may be too weak to hunt after her journey. Mind her left head – that one bites._

_With love,_

_Auntie Apolonia_

As you read the letter, your chest tightens and you slowly sink to your knees until you’re nearly face down in the sand having what one can assume is a panic attack. Your arms shake beneath the weight of this news and struggle to support you as you hyperventilate and feel the earth’s rotation inside your head. You can’t even cry properly. All you do is dry-heave and gasp and sob tearlessly and wretch.

 

The fucked up thing is… you’re not the least bit sad that your father has died.

 

What causes your throat to choke on stifled screams of anguish is not the certainty of your father’s death, but the uncertainty of everyone else’s survival. As much as you wanted to believe that you left nothing behind…

 

YOU. LEFT. THEM. ALL.

 

You never thought that guilt could be so complete and consuming that it could trigger the urge to vomit. But it can, and you do – you hurl your protein shake and your partially digested power bar into the sand. You hadn’t even noticed that your companions had taken to the ocean while you read the letter, and are unaware of your total meltdown.

 

Somehow, puking concentrates your vital bodily functions on one goal and actually helps you calm down enough to breathe, if still heavily. You collect yourself enough to zip up your wetsuit, grab your surfboard, and run to the ocean. Running is all you know how to do – it is what you’ve been doing for nearly a year. And when you hit the water, you lie on your board and you paddle your arms. You swim way out before the waves break, where the sea undulates and other surfers bob on the surface. You keep swimming, further and further out to sea, unheeding the calls of _Volverá! Volverá! Peligroso!_ You want to keep paddling until you fall off the edge of the earth.

 

All you can hear is the whisper of the Pacific, but the sound gives you no comfort. The white noise of water becomes the white noise of fire, and you imagine the entirety of the wizarding world burning. You imagine your house in Luckington being razed to the ground, Diagon Alley engulfed in smoke and flames, Hogsmeade a giant tinderbox. You imagine Hogwarts Castle leveled to piles of charred, blood-splattered rubble on the rolling hills. And corpses floating in the Black Lake. And bodies of children strewn about the Forbidden Forest. No matter how hard you blink and make your eyes blur with salt water, you can’t stop seeing their faces – their dead, vacant eyes, and their dead, gaping mouths – eyes that once looked at you fondly or with disdain, mouths that kissed you or told you off or smiled at you. You see them all, dead, and the horror of it all is not nearly as sickening as the fact that you left them to die.

 

YOU. LEFT. THEM. ALL.

 

These words beat themselves into your brain, over and over, worse than the rhythmic tapping of a tattoo needle, burning with permanence and finality.

 

YOU. LEFT. THEM. ALL.

 

Draco, Rosa, Blaise, and Daphne. You even have some spare fucks to give to Pansy, Millie, Vin, and Greg.

 

You could not have done anything to save them – you are not foolish enough to even entertain that thought. But you could have done the honorable thing and died with your friends, where you belong.

 

What sort of hell were they languishing in while you were gallivanting across the world without a care like a selfish international playboy? What atrocities had Draco been forced to commit while you were frolicking at the beach? How many Death Eaters tried to violate Rosa while you were fucking your way through the southern hemisphere? How many tears did Daphne have to swallow to keep up her stoic façade while you drank coconut rum and cola through a decorative straw? What lies did Blaise have to weave to keep his black-widow-spider of a mother safe while you spun your tales of adventure on the pages of your journal?

 

How many of your friends had to die so that The Boy Who Lived could survive?

 

You can’t bear to have these questions answered. So you do what you do best – you compartmentalize. You don’t deal with it. You ride the waves when the surf’s up and you get lost in the thrill of the sea’s power.

 

You’d learned how to surf in Australia and had been surprised to find how easily it had come to you, how in-tune you were with the ocean. Benjamin was your instructor, and because it is becoming a pattern with you, he was also your lover. The most valuable thing he ever taught you was to not fight the tide – let the waves take you where they want you to go. If it meant you had to wipe out, then let the sea toss you around. Big waves were not conquered; they were endured.

 

Somehow, you’ve endured them all. You’re not terribly athletic, though you’re certainly more fit now than you ever were, but you’ve managed not to drown, even in the waves that you’d thought were too big for a novice to handle. And if you – lanky, skinny, bookish, little you – could endure the grand power of the ocean, perhaps your friends could endure a war.

 

Slytherins find a way to endure. They don’t jump headlong into danger like reckless Gryffindors. It is quite reasonable to believe that they survived. This thought pacifies you enough to stop seeing dead faces every time you wipe seawater out of your eyes. But it gives you little comfort, for even if they had managed to live, it is very likely that some of them are in Azkaban.

 

Draco – the boy with the haunted grey eyes, who you couldn’t decide whether he was the greatest unrequited love of your life or your biggest nemesis – you fear for him the most. He is the one for whom you feel most guilty. Draco is who you would have been, had you stayed. And now you think you _should have_ stayed, not for the sake of the Greater Good, but for Draco.

 

You were the only one who understood most intimately what he had to endure, and maybe you could have helped one another endure together. Maybe you could’ve put your rivalry and your grudges aside enough for that, and maybe Draco’s fate would have been easier to bear knowing he had somebody who shared the same exact fate.

 

It goes back further than August of last year, when you left. It goes back all the way to when Draco had broken your heart at fifteen by rejecting the kiss you’d foolishly given him beneath the stars on the great lawn of Malfoy Manor. You let your broken heart and your pride tear your friendship apart. And by the time your fathers were imprisoned in Azkaban for breaking into the Ministry Azkaban, you had already managed to ignore each other for an entire year.

 

That’s when you should have been there for each other – when it was clearer than ever that your lives were parallel. That’s when you had started to really need each other, though neither of you had known it at the time. That’s when you truly abandoned Draco. Not when you left home, but that first time you chose to ignore the haunted look in his eyes and failed to see that they mirrored your own.

 


	5. Chapter 5

She is beautiful as ever. Her skin is like porcelain and her lips are the color of fresh blood. She looks slightly different than how you’d left her, perhaps a bit younger – maybe fifteen rather than sixteen. Her hair is black again. When you last saw her, she’d gone blond and you remember liking it more than you should have – you remember your fingers tangling in it while she got down on her knees for you.

 

She’s wearing an emerald green dress, and unlike most of her wardrobe, it’s loose fitting and flowing, and the silk seems to billow out behind her on its own accord. The top swell of her breasts peeks out from the deep plunge of the bodice’s bust line and the curve of her pale neck beckons to be kissed.

 

And you want to kiss her, more than you ever have. You want to take her firmly with both hands and hike up her dress to find that she’s not wearing any knickers – she never seems to be wearing any when you see her. You want to knock the fruit bowl off the table behind her and splay her body over the surface. You want to show her that you’re not the same boy who had come too soon and had cried when you’d given her your virginity. You want her to feel that your hands no longer shake when you touch naked flesh, that your lips move with purpose now when you apply them to soft skin.

 

But you can’t. You’ll never be able to touch her again, never relive how it felt to be inside her. This fact crushes the jagged-edged shards of your broken heart into fine dust.

 

“You look good, Theo,” she says, eying you slowly with a smirk playing on those blood red lips.

 

You don’t blush. It’s been a while since you have. “Thanks. So do you,” you admit with a soft smile, “You’re even more beautiful than I remember – and I remember you being stunning.”

 

She grins wryly. “Well, I’d bloody hope so. Donovan paid a lot of money to make me look this good.” She slides her lacquered fingertips down the curves of her waist and the sight of it tugs on your chest.

 

You heave a deep, melancholic sigh and exchange sad, wistful glances with one another. “How’d it happen, Rosa?”

 

She gives you a lofty shrug then leans casually on the gilded frame of her portrait. “Not as brilliantly as I would have liked. Rather disappointing, actually.”

 

“Oh?” You quirk your brow and inwardly remark how very like Rosaline Dolohov to be unimpressed by the circumstances of her own death, more than by the fact she had died.”

 

“I should’ve gone out fighting,” she says, indignant, “I didn’t even live to see the damn war. Van told me the Death Eaters raided our house in March, and I wasn’t even awake to defend it. I should’ve died then, with my wand and my head held high.”

 

You narrow your eyes and wonder if she’s exaggerating. “You slept through a Death Eater raid?”

 

“Well, yeah,” she says like it’s obvious, “I had been in a coma since February. I overdosed on Bliss. So bloody pathetic,” she scoffs, raising her eyes towards the top of her frame, “I should’ve been able to handle it. I’m guessing it had been laced.”

 

“So you died while you were in a drug-induced coma?” you ask, still unable to believe it.

 

“I was _killed_ while I was in a coma,” she clarifies, which makes it even harder to believe. “Mercifully. My girlfriend couldn’t stand to see me wasting away, so--” her gaze falls as she trails off.

 

You gape silently for a good minute because it’s all so insane. “Wait, wait, wait. Your _girlfriend?”_

“Yes, my _girlfriend_. Did you think I would pine for you after you left? Honestly, Theo.” Her carefully sculpted eyebrows arch and she seems impatient, which is a bit ridiculous, considering she has all of eternity to stand regally in her formal portrait to explain.

 

You resign to accept anything she says as truth – it never should’ve come as a surprise that any of this happened. Rosaline Dolohov had always been wrapped up in mystery and intrigue and unexpected outcomes, like film noir. “No, I just… Go on.”

 

“Not much left to say. It was April. Shit was starting to go down everywhere and Shane knew that she might not be able to take care of me anymore. So she put a pillow over my face.” She shrugs and says it so casually that it’s even more disturbing to you.

 

You stand there, blinking rapidly, your mouth slightly ajar, in utter disbelief that the strongest woman you’d ever known met her untimely death by a pillow. She was a goddess. A warrior. Superhuman. She wasn’t supposed to die like this. She wasn’t supposed to die, _period_. Out of all the people you had left behind, she was the one you were certain had survived. Her house had been the first one you’d visited upon returning to England. You’d been greeted by her oldest brother, Donovan Norrington, the most intimidating of all her half-siblings. Without a word, he had escorted you to the makeshift shrine that had been erected around her portrait in her bedroom, as if he’d been expecting you. But you weren’t expecting to find an enchanted portrait in place of your ex girlfriend.

 

 

“I should’ve died a badass,” she pouts slightly.

 

“Rosa, you _did_ die a badass. You’ll never stop being a badass,” you tell her.

 

She seems to consider it for a moment and then accepts it with a smug grin, “Yeah.”

 

A pregnant silence falls between you. Were she still alive and standing before you in the flesh, this would be the part where she’d grab you by the belt loops of your trousers, pull you close, and kiss you hard. And were it a year ago, you would’ve nearly spontaneously ejaculated in your pants and whined about not being good enough for her.

 

Things are so different now. More different than you’re even fully aware of yet.

 

You break the silence because you still haven’t said what you’d come here to say. And even though she’s dead and you’re talking to the portrait that had been commissioned by her brother while she’d been in a coma, you know Rosa would have needed to hear it.

 

“I’m sorry that I left you,” you say quietly, trying your hardest to put some sincerity behind it.

 

She sees right through you, as she always had. “You’re not sorry that you left, Theodore,” she says without bitterness. Somehow, in death, she’s gained insight and wisdom. “You’re sorry that I’m dead. And you don’t have to even say it. I know.”

 

You bite your lip hard, trying not to cry in front of her. Even though she’s gone, you still hate looking so weak in front of her. But you can’t help crying because she’s gone _forever_ and has just said the words you never wanted to hear.   _I’m dead_.

 

She sighs, “Oh bother – don’t start with the waterworks.” You’re afraid she’s going to reprimand you for not being strong enough. But she gives you a soft smile. “Save the tears for my gravestone, love. They’re better served where the dead lie. And I’m standing here for you. So, no crying.”

 

Your tears gush, but only briefly, as if in a final cleansing moment. You wipe the last of them away with the cuffs of your jumper and you force a smile. “Sorry.”

 

“And enough apologies! Ugh!” There’s that impatience again, but it’s lighthearted.

 

“Right. Sorry ‘bout that.” You chuckle because you’re being cheeky.

 

“Seriously, Theo. No apologies. I understand now. I offered you my family’s protection, and you were right to refuse it. I mean, look where it got me.”

 

You can’t tell if the last part is a sick joke or not. “I just needed to sever my ties to my father on my own terms. In my own way. Otherwise, I’d still be miserable.”

 

“Yeah, you would’ve sucked as my wife anyway.” Her tone lets you know that she’s definitely joking, but there’s still so much truth in her words and the look in her eyes tells you that she knows it. Part of you wants to tell her how emasculating she could be when you were a couple, and that the thought of marrying her just to escape the Death Eaters had terrified you, but there’s no point now.

 

You smile wistfully. “I would’ve worshiped you, though.”

 

“Goddesses are meant to be worshiped. Spouses are meant to be loved. And, to be honest, you were just infatuated with me.” She’s sighs sadly.

 

You gaze shamefully at her from behind a fan of dark lashes, as if you’re a child and she’s your mother.

And hadn’t it always been that way? You remember that your obsession with her had quickly rivaled the obsession you had with the memory of your dead mother. You had put Rosa on a pedestal to be revered as the embodiment of feminine power, opposite the marble idol of your mother - The Aphrodite to balance your Athena. You were perhaps more in love with the idea of Rosa than with Rosa herself.

 

“I cared deeply about you, Rosa. When I told you I loved you, I believed it,” you insist.

 

“I don’t doubt that, Theodore.” She offers you a small smile. And it makes you feel better.

 

“And I, erm, I think I fancy men more than women anyway,” you admit.

 

She laughs and teases you. “Just figuring that one out now?”

 

“What? Am I obvious or something?” You bite the corner of your lip.

 

She nods. “Oh yeah. You’ve never been good at staring clandestinely.”

 

You gasp, pretending to be affronted, but both end up laughing.

 

“I totally saw you checking out my brother’s arse when he brought you here,” she jokes.

 

“I was doing nothing of the sort! My arse is mortally afraid of your brother.”

 

She assesses you with her eyes and jibes. “You look like you filled out a bit. I think you could take him.”

 

“Take him down in a fight? Or _Take him_.” Your eyebrows waggle. You’re completely joking. You really are afraid of him.

 

She sniffs haughtily, “Donovan eats boys like you for lunch.”

 

“And sucks on their bones for tea?” You wink.

 

“You’re incorrigible, Theodore Nott,” she giggles.

 

“So I’ve been told.”

 

“Get the fuck out and tell everybody to visit me.” She shoos you out of the room and resumes her regal pose in the portrait.

 

“I will. Goodbye, Rosa.”

 

You start to leave and she doesn’t break her pose when she tells you, “You should probably go see Draco Malfoy.”

 

The name hits you like a jinx to the side of the head that you didn’t see coming.

 

“Malfoy? Why should I?”

 

She shrugs slightly. “Just a hunch. Like I said, you’ve never been very subtle when you stare.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

“Well, look who the cat dragged in.” Her voice comes at your back, but there is no mistaking that affected, haughty drawl. You turn around to find Pansy Parkinson queuing up behind you at the Records Office of the Ministry of Magic. “Theodore Nott. I’d say you were fashionably late, but this is hardly a party.” She is flippant as ever, though her calculated grin falters on her last word, and you wonder if she is hiding something besides her eyes behind large sunglasses.

 

“Pansy,” you manage to give her a smile because she’s the first face from your past that you’ve seen (in the flesh, at least) since your return, and it gives you a bit of solace that one of your fellow Slytherins is alive and not incarcerated, even if she was once your rival for Draco’s favor.

 

“Where’ve you been? You missed all the fun.” The way she says _fun_ , heavily laden with sarcasm and seasoned with bitterness, you know she really means _Hell_.

 

“As far away from here as I could get,” you reply as you take in the gloomy corridor.

 

“Listen, I’m sorry about your father,” she says, and you can tell that she only faintly means it. You don’t blame her. You’re not even sorry about your father’s passing. “Do send me an owl if you plan on having a memorial service.”

 

The truth is, you hadn’t even thought about memorializing your father or acknowledging his death with any sort of reverence. But you respond, “Of course,” because you don’t have the emotional energy to explain why you won’t owl her. It doesn’t even have to do with the fact that you have harbored an irrational dislike for Pansy for years. You say nothing more and the awkward silence that ensues is thick. You can feel questions hanging between you heavily.

 

“How long have you been back?” she finally asks with genuine curiosity as if the exact date of your return could explain your cold shoulder. When she pushes up her sunglasses and rests them on the top of her head, you see that her eyes are slightly puffy and darkly circled, and you wonder if it is from lack of sleep or crying. Perhaps it is from both.

 

“Two days?” you shrug because all the hours seem to blend into one another since you’ve come back to England.

 

“So you are _really_ quite late to the party,” she says with a quirked brow, seemingly getting all the information from you that she needs in order to read you properly, even though you’re still not sure what she’s looking for. “I’m assuming you’re just beginning the process of Reclamation, then,” she says with a slightly superior air.

 

You are here because your solicitor told you that you couldn’t begin the process of claiming your inheritance and settling your family’s debts without an official copy of your father’s death certificate and a properly completed form registered with the Ministry. Apparently, you are one out of many wizards and witches whom the war had rendered the sole survivor of their families – those left behind to piece their lives back together with the remnants of gold and property from their family’s Ministry-seized accounts.

 

“I only just found out that my father passed a few days ago,” you admit.

 

“You haven’t been reading the papers, I suppose.” Pansy rests a hand on your shoulder and you can’t even bother to cringe beneath her touch. She tells you earnestly, if a bit patronizingly, “Reclamation is a really shitty, long, humiliating process of wading through bureaucracy, and if you want to talk about it, we could go for a drink after we’re done here.”

 

You can’t understand why Pansy is offering to console you after what you assume should be a quick visit to the Ministry, until you get through the long queue and leave empty-handed. You thought you’d just be picking up a document and filing some sort of paperwork. But you only get as far as making an appointment to meet with a case manager in a week so that you can file the paperwork. Of course, the Ministry was not going to make things easy for the children of Death Eaters, regardless of their lack of involvement with Voldemort.

 

Pansy, however, leaves with a stack of papers and a relieved expression. You assume that she’s been wading through the bullshit for quite some time.

 

 

You would never dream that you’d be sitting alone in a booth of a pub with Pansy Parkinson, nursing pints and swapping literal war stories. Your stories are less about war and more about escaping it, while Pansy’s contain the much-needed dose of non-media-filtered information that you’ve been desperate for.

 

She lights a cigarette with her wand and you don’t miss the way her hand slightly quivers involuntarily. You light your own and silently muse to yourself that she’s smoking the same muggle brand as you are – you and she were always fond of the same things. The way she speaks, with a sort of solemn detachment, makes you think that she’s had quite some time to process it all, unlike you. Either that, or she is just exceedingly good at compartmentalization – as a Slytherin, you wouldn’t put it past her.

 

“My father and my brother, Paulie, were both arrested at the end of the Battle of Hogwarts – you _do_ know about the final battle, don’t you?” You nod impatiently and she continues. “They were tossed into Azkaban along with the other Death Eaters.” You marvel at her ability to tell you this without falling apart.

 

“Including Draco?” All your muscles tense, but you hide your alarm.

 

Pansy nods. “Including Draco.” You can’t help but take a deep, shuddering breath and ruffle your hair worriedly – things really are as bad as you had feared. But Pansy reassures you. “He’s out now. He’s under house arrest at Malfoy Manor awaiting trial. I’m assuming the Ministry is waiting for his birthday so that they can use the full weight of the law against him. I found out the hard way that they can use _veritaserum_ on you in a trial once you’re eighteen.”

 

“Were you tried?” you ask.

 

“By the Wizengamot? No. I was just a witness in my brother’s trial. But the court of wizarding society found me guilty the moment I spoke up against Potter.” She purses her lips and spits bitterly, turning heads in the pub, “Apparently I’m a horrible person because I didn’t want hundreds of kids to get killed to save one _specky_ git.” She smiles uneasily at the person staring from a nearby booth then takes a drag off her cigarette and expels much of her anger along with a plume of smoke. She continues at a less conspicuous volume, but with no less bitterness, “The ironic thing is that Saint Potter ended up sacrificing himself in the end anyway. The fucker is still alive, of course. He’s a bloody war hero. It doesn’t matter that so many people died because of him.”

 

You share her sentiment regarding Potter and you have to admire her balls for actually voicing her opinion, especially when it had clearly been social suicide. You have never had any fondness for Potter, and in fact felt slightly jealous at his uncanny ability to rile up Draco more easily than you ever could. When Potter nearly killed Draco with a reckless spell in a bathroom brawl, you wanted Harry dead nearly as badly as the Dark Lord had. You are definitely not pleased that Harry Potter managed to stay alive while people you cared about suffered. You wonder if Potter is even aware of the devastation he caused – the families he tore asunder, the lives he ruined, the children he orphaned.

 

“What happened to your father? And Paulie?” you ask.

 

Pansy stares at the bottom of her glass and you watch all the light drain from her eyes. “Daddy got life in prison. Paulie got fifteen years.” She downs the rest of her drink swiftly as if it’ll make anything less horrifically true. “Mummy’s gone bat-shit. She’s in Saint Mungo’s now. I had to file for Reclamation so that we wouldn’t lose our house.”

 

Her hand trembles again as she smokes her cigarette, and you wonder if she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. You thought you had it bad, but Pansy seems to have it much worse. “I’m sorry,” you say feebly. You should probably comfort her somehow, but you are unsure of what’s acceptable here because your history with Pansy is complex. You opt for the least intimate option of buying another round because you really don’t fancy hugging her right now.

 

“Who did we lose?” you ask, bracing yourself for more bad news.

 

“Well, we probably would’ve lost more had McGonagall not thrown out all of Slytherin House from the castle before the fighting started in earnest – at least my speaking out saved some of us.”

 

“Daphne? Her sister? Blaise?”

 

Pansy nods. “All alive, all at home. But we almost lost Astoria. Stupid girl went back for Draco.”

 

Your chest clenches and your heart nearly stops. “Are Draco and Astoria…?” You can barely get out the question.

 

“An item? Far from it,” she laughs absent of mirth. “She’s got it bad for Draco, though. I’ve no idea why she bothers – he’s dead to the world. He’s a solitary island that nobody is allowed to visit.” Pansy gazes off absently into the distance and you can see the pain shining in her eyes. “He’s been unreachable for quite some time. Long before he was arrested. Ever since you left.”

 

And then she turns her eyes on you. You know that look. You have been on the receiving end of Pansy’s wrath many times before. It used to amuse you. But right now, all you feel is guilt. You want to say something sarcastic or even something insensitive to deflect the blame. Perhaps you should just own up to it.

 

Instead, you redirect. “We didn’t lose anybody. Well, there’s that.”

 

Pansy scoffs, “I never said that. You distracted me with Draco.”

 

“Some things never change,” you say with a wry grin that holds very little humor.

 

Pansy takes another deep pull from her cigarette and slowly exhales the smoke before delivering the grave news. “We lost Vincent. Draco and Greg watched it happen in the castle. Consumed by his own Fiend Fire. He tried to end Potter all on his own, even though everybody knew Voldemort wanted to be the one to do it. Of course, Vin isn’t being remembered for his bravery. He and his father didn’t even get proper funerals – Vin’s mum was too devastated. Blaise and I held a memorial. Nobody had the balls to show up.”

 

You worry your bottom lip, at a loss for anything to say. You were never close with Vincent. He and Greg had always brought out the worst in Draco, and for that, you tended to steer clear of them when they were together. Learning that Vincent died makes you realize that it could have just as easily been Draco, or even you, had you stayed.

 

Your silence prompts Pansy to continue. “Professor Snape was killed – bit of a mystery surrounding that, actually. Damn shame. I liked him a lot. Greg’s father died in the battle. Draco’s aunt was killed – the crazy one.” She goes on to name several people you don’t know, or relations to people you vaguely know. And then she takes a deep, shuddering cleansing breath and reaches across the table to put her hand over yours. You can tell it pains her to tell you this and you have a feeling that you already know what she’s going to say. “Theo, when you were gone, did you know that Rosa--”

 

You stop her before she finishes. You really don’t want to hear it again. It hurt enough the first time and the pain is still raw and new. “I know.” You fight back tears, but it’s no use and they silently roll down your cheeks as you nod slowly. “I know. I visited her first thing when I got back.” The tightness that’s already in your chest clamps down on your heart even harder, making it difficult to breathe.

 

“I’m sorry,” Pansy whispers, and you know she is sincere.

 

You sniffle and dab at your face and quickly blink away the tears, embarrassed that you’re crying in a muggle pub. “Hey, can we get out of here?”

 

“Sure thing,” she says, “Any place in particular? Or do you just want to walk?” Her fingers remain on your hand.

 

“Actually, there’s something I need to do, if you don’t mind coming with me.”

 

 

You have been putting off your return to Luckington Manor since you arrived in England. When you left a year ago, you vowed never to go back to your old house. You never thought you’d be inheriting the place. As much as it sickens you to think about all the pain and the horror that is associated with the estate, it is still your ancestral home, and your responsibility.

 

Pansy is the last person you’d expect to be accompanying you. But you are thankful that you are not alone, because you can not handle the emotional upheaval that comes along with returning to the place where you were born – where you were raised – where your mother died – where you and Draco used to play as children – where your father made life hell.

 

What the Ministry had failed to tell you and your aunt was that more than half of your house burned down. You wonder if withholding that information had been a calculated move by some spiteful Ministry official to make you suffer for the crimes your father could not be held accountable for.

 

You stand on your scorched front lawn amongst the skeletal remains of an arbor-lined walkway, staring up at the blackened stone edifice in a daze. It feels like it isn’t really happening to you, like you’re watching somebody else’s life play out before your eyes. The tightness inside your chest is now so painful that it’s threatening to make you scream out in anguish.

 

As much as you hated where you came from, you still mourn over the few good memories that had been destroyed inside Luckington Manor. Though the granite walls remain, everything flammable inside is likely gone, including the paintings that your mother created. That is what kills you the most – the wisps of her everlasting touch on canvas are now erased.

 

You distantly feel Pansy’s arms supporting you – apparently you are on the verge of collapse and hadn’t even realized you were crumbling to the ground. “It’s just stuff,” she reassures you, but you can hear the same mournful crack in her voice. “The important thing is that you are alive.”

 

It gives you very little comfort. You will never get over the guilt you feel for surviving.

 

You sit on the paving stones, still gripping Pansy’s hand like it’s the only thing keeping you from falling apart all together. You both stare up at the wreckage and try to piece together what happened here.

 

After a long, somber silence, she points to a corner turret of the house where the stained glass windows have been blasted out and thick soot coats the stone more thickly than the rest of the building. “There. That looks like where the fire started.”

 

You nod faintly. “Father’s private library.” That had been his secret room. Where pure-blood, high society gentlemen entered, and hooded, masked wizards exited. “He must have set the fire himself. To cover his tracks.”

 

And you wonder if, near the end, he realized that he was on the losing side. He had never been ashamed of his associations, but had always been careful to save his own skin. You wonder if burning the evidence of his associations would have really done anything to keep him out of Azkaban had he survived the war. And you think, likely not, for one cannot burn the stain of The Dark Lord’s mark off one’s arm.

 

 

This holds true for all the Death Eaters. Including Draco. You still haven’t visited him. You feel like you have no right to see him. You gave up that right as a friend when you abandoned him. But you can’t keep running away from him when he needs you, and despite all that had separated you and ruined your friendship, you still know Draco better than anyone else knows him. The bond you once shared had been one that neither he nor you have ever forged with another. And even though he has been pushing everyone else away, maybe you are different. Maybe he’ll let you step foot onto his island.

 

So you take time off from salvaging the remnants of your house that are worth saving. You write a letter in your old room – one of the rooms that had been relatively untouched by the fire. You fold it up neatly and seal it, hesitating before pressing the Nott insignia into the wax. You decide that Draco should have the courtesy of deciding whether or not to let you back into his life even before reading your letter.

 

 

_Dear Draco,_

_I’m sorry._

_\- Theodore_

_P.S. I’m home._

It’s not much, but all the things you need to say to him have to be said face-to-face. He deserves that much.

 

You take the letter to your window and push open the stained glass with a bit of effort. It surprises you how one year of disuse could render the hinges so rusty. You wonder if the same goes for all of your things as you whistle loudly across the overgrown grounds of Luckington Manor.

 

It takes a few minutes, but your owl comes flying out of the thick woods. When she lands on your windowsill, she buries her head in your palm, starved for attention. She wheedles a good, long neck scratching session out of you before she even entertains the idea of doing you a favor.

 

“You’re a good girl, Helvetica,” you whisper fondly, to which she replies with an affectionate little coo. “I’m taking you with me this time. Promise.” Then she serves you a little pinch of her beak on the top of your hand because, as much as she loves you, she is still angry that you had left her behind, and she doesn’t want you to forget it.

 

Owls are not unlike people in that regard.

 

Helvetica flies to the other end of Wiltshire County. She’s made this trip countless times for you, and you know that it takes exactly seventeen-minutes in each direction. You spend the time trying not to be conscious of your watch, scavenging through the butler’s pantry for anything edible rather than let your stomach twist in anxious knots while waiting. In that time you discover that all of the Nott family silver is gone – perhaps stolen or hocked to pay one of your father’s debts.

 

You also find your house elf dead in the kitchen when a horrible smell alerts you to its presence. Its hands and face are scorched and melted beyond recognition, but you know it is Pogue because its wearing the same dingy rags made from your mother’s salvaged, old housecoat. Just seeing the dirty, faded blue floral pattern is enough to rekindle your furious hatred of your father – the memory of him throwing out your mother’s clothes with the rubbish when you were eight is still as painful as the day it happened. Just as detestable is the very likely possibility that your father purposely set the house on fire with the elf still inside so that all of his secrets could die with his servant.

 

You spend the next hour burying the remains of Pogue in the neglected garden, next to the other ‘lesser beings’ your father killed: Your grey Persian cat, Dorian. Your Cavalier King Charles puppy, Prince. Your gecko lizard, Draconis (yes, Draco had been very amused by your choice of name when you were ten). Plus all the various pets that your father had said made you soft, and thus sentenced to death right in front of your crying eyes as punishment for your shortcomings as a pure blood young man. You are surprised that your father had let Helvetica live this long.

 

It is just over half an hour when your owl returns with the same letter. The seal is cracked, so you know that it had reached Malfoy Manor. You are too bogged down in the mire of the mess your father left you, both literal and figurative, that you can’t even muster enough emotional energy to feel indignant.

 

You give it a day before arriving at Malfoy Manor, unannounced, because you owe it to Draco to try just a little bit harder. When you apparate to the gilded gates, there are reporters and photographers camped out like vultures, waiting for the next casualty of war. They descend upon you with flashbulbs and questions.

 

_Were you and Draco Malfoy schoolmates? Did you know he was a Death Eater? Have you come to say goodbye before he’s locked up in Azkaban? Do you not care that it is social suicide to align yourself with the Malfoys?_

You are disgusted, but not surprised, by the quickness of the press to convict Draco. They’d always been overly eager to vilify people, even a child. You make sure that your rudest two fingers are in the majority of the photos they steal of you.

 

Narcissa Malfoy, hidden behind a large-brimmed hat, dark glasses, and a lace fan, rescues you from the media dogs biting at your ankles. She reaches through the bars of the front gates, takes you by the wrist, and apparates you to her garden.

 

It is not nearly as well kept as you remember. Many of the topiaries are overgrown, and thus misshapen to grotesque, unrecognizable animals. You don’t blame Narcissa for neglecting her garden. It is still leaps and bounds more pleasant than the tangle of weeds and thorny vines that twist around the gardens of Luckington Manor.

 

So that she may speak to you sincerely, she has the grace and the Old World decency to remove the layers that had been required to go incognito on her own property. She removes her sunglasses and drops it into her pocket along with her fan. She holds both your hands in hers and stands before you like the bearer of the worst news. So you brace yourself.

 

“Perhaps you mean well, Theodore, but you shouldn’t be here,” she says, as gently as she can, “I speak on behalf of my son when I say this – Draco needs you to stay away.”

 

Your throat feels tight and your eyes sting beneath the intensity of her silver gaze that had always been powerful enough to compensate for the aristocratic placidity of her voice. She has never been able to hide the pity or the severity in her eyes when she looked at you, and now is no different.

 

“I am truly sorry for your loss,” she adds after a small, sympathetic sigh. “Are you getting by on your own?” You know her concern to be genuine, because she’d always worried about you when you were a kid.

 

You shrug sadly, crushed by the finality of your wrecked friendship with Draco more than anything. “Yeah, I’ll be alright,” you mumble dejectedly. And because she has been reading your body language since you were a small child, she knows that you are anything but alright.

 

She brushes the fringe of your hair out of your eyes and tenderly holds your chin as if you’ve never progressed from the unkempt, motherless boy that her son had somehow been fond of once. “I’ll send over a hamper of groceries,” she says with a small, somber smile.

 

 

You have just enough dignity to not fall apart in her presence, and wait until you return to the wreckage of your house. You cry like you’re fifteen all over again because this hurts just as badly as when Draco rejected your kiss. You have never felt so completely alone and forsaken in your entire life. You don’t know if hours or days have passed as you languish away in your bed amongst the sheets that smell heavily of burnt timber.

 

It could be Tuesday or Wednesday, and you honestly wouldn’t know the difference, when you are rudely awoken with a firm pillow to the head. From that moment, everything is a whirlwind called Hurricane Pansy. She wrenches the tattered curtains open, letting in a migraine-inducing shaft of light into the room.

 

“Get up, Theo. Ugh, you smell like Quidditch pants after a long match. When was the last time you washed? When was the last time you’d eaten? Bloody Hell, Theo, you look like shit. I’d ask you who died, but the real question is, who hasn’t. Get up, Theo! Are you listening to me? Have you anything decent to wear? We’re going to the courts.”

 

You groan deeply and bury yourself under the dusty blankets. “The fuck are you talking about, Pans?” you whine.

 

You haven’t called her _Pans_ since you were fourteen and fond of watching her bend over in her short school skirt. Now you’re using it out of laziness rather than as a term of endearment. But there’s a tiny part of you that rather likes that somebody in this bloody world still cares about you for whatever reason.

 

She yanks all the sheets onto the floor with the swish of her wand and stands at the foot of the bed with her hands resting sternly on her hips, glaring at you. “Draco’s trial is today. Didn’t you know? Or do you _really_ not give a shit about him?”

 

You actually had no idea. But instead of arguing with Pansy and being subject to more guilt-inducing wrath, you roll out of bed and draw a bath for yourself. You are only mildly alarmed at all the soot that comes off of your skin. When you come out of the _en suite_ , you have just enough modesty to flinch when you see Pansy still hanging about your room, still looking disgusted. She rolls her eyes at you as if she’s seen it all, and that’s the bit that makes you uncomfortable – not the fact that you’re wearing nothing but a towel around your waist in the presence of a ‘lady’.

 

“Found your suit in your trunk. Took the liberty of laying it out for you and charming out the wrinkles. I’ll go down and scrounge up some breakfast. I saw some baskets of groceries left in the foyer.” You muse to yourself that she’d make a lovely wife someday for some unfortunate bloke. But she is speaking to you like she’s your mother, and an annoyed mother at that. “Do hurry, Theo. Trial begins in two hours and we need to get a good seat.”

 

The way she’s talking about Draco’s trial, it is almost like a spectator sport. You think it’s rather rude of her. But when you arrive at the circus that is the Wizengamot Hall, you understand completely. This is Quidditch-World-Cup-Finals-level media hysteria. The reporters and photographers are queued up around the block just for a chance to get in – those that are already set up in the vestibule outside the courtroom flank the walls, two deep. It disgusts you that this hype surrounds the fate of one person who, much like you, just wanted to be left alone to wither into nonexistence.

 

The Malfoys are no stranger to notoriety. They are the last pillar of the pure blood elite to fall, so of course, the Ministry has opened this trial to the public. And the animals that wait with drooling, gaping maws are thirsty for blood. You cannot imagine how mortifying this will be for Draco.

 

Pansy’s pushy persistence pays off, and you actually score seats in the room, not far from the front. You’re close enough that you see Narcissa and Potter already sitting in what you assume to be the witness box. You see Daphne and Astoria sitting in the front row of the audience, together for once in solidarity to support Draco.

 

It is a waiting game. You wonder if the audience is kept anxious for longer than necessary just to rile them up – just to make them good and angry once Draco takes the stand. The noise in the echoing chamber is deafening – you can’t make out any words. It is just a buzzing hive of anger and spite. It’s unbearably hot in the room. You find yourself tugging incessantly at your shirt collar that feels like a noose. You realize that you are entirely unprepared to see Draco again. The thought of his haunted, grey eyes and his hollow cheeks tears your insides apart. You start to panic. Your breathing grows shallow and rapid.

 

The buzz in the room starts to form a collective chant in your head. _This is your fault. You shouldn’t have left him. You should have been there for him. You should have taken him with you. This is your fault. This is all your fault. Draco is going to die alone in prison and it is all because of you. You are guilty. Guilty! GUILTY!_

“Silence in the court! All rise for the most honorable wizards of the Wizengamot!”

 

That is when it becomes all too real for you to handle. When everybody stands in respect for the presiding Wizengamot members as they enter, you make a swift exit. You don’t even hear Pansy hissing in protest. You come crashing through the enormous wooden doors, and you’re met with an onslaught of trigger-happy flashbulbs.

 

“Oh fuck off! Bloody vultures! He was just a boy, you know! A child!” You rampage through the throng of photographers and blood-thirsty spectators who couldn’t get into the packed room, elbowing reporters who get too close. You run out of the building as fast as you can, feeling like you’ll die of oxygen-deprivation or guilt. When you finally make it out, you hunch over, rest your hands on your knees and gasp for air.

 

You nearly punch the person that puts their hand on your back.

 

“Easy, there, Nott,” says Blaise Zabini, stepping back with his hands up in surrender, “I _thought_ it was you, though from behind it was hard to tell.”

 

You catch your breath just enough to say, “Unfortunately. Yes. It’s me.” You’re still panting when you reach out a hand for him to shake.

 

Blaise looks down his nose at the offered hand as if it offends him. “Oh, it’s like _that_ now. I see.”

 

You roll your eyes and take back your rejected hand. But he chuckles and yanks you into a firm hug.

 

“Theodore, you arsehole. Pansy told me you were back. Thanks for telling me.” He squeezes you harder than you remember him being capable of, then you realize that he’s a lot taller and fuller than you had remembered. He was always the most mature of your lot, and you are not surprised that he now has the appearance to match. Blaise is eighteen, going on twenty-eight, and a very handsome twenty-eight at that. He claps you on the back with a force that threatens to make you cough. “Late to the party too? Come on, you can go in with me. I’ve got connections.”

 

You step out from under his arm and shake your head. “I’m not going in there.” You yank at the knots of your tie and pull it through your collar.

 

Blaise mutters at you, still with just a hint of his signature affectionately discourteous regard, “Don’t be a prick. We need to be there. We have to stand tall and show Draco we support him. We can’t let the bloody Ministry bureaucrats or the biased press intimidate us. Slytherins stick together.”

 

You have never known Blaise to be political, which is probably why he came out of the war unscathed. But now, his rally cry is something of a marvel. It warms your heart what Draco and his friendship can inspire. But it isn’t enough.

 

“I just can’t bear to watch,” you admit weakly. You know you would absolutely lose it if you saw Draco being hauled off to Azkaban for the rest of his life. It is a very likely scenario, given the climate right now.

 

Perhaps Blaise can see the anxiety and the turmoil in your eyes. Certainly, your erratic breathing and your anxious behavior give something away. His affronted demeanor melts to one of understanding. He reaches out and pats your shoulder, smiling solemnly. “I’ll let you know what happens, then.” He points across the street. “Go wait in that muggle pub. I’ll update you when I can.”

 

You take up residence in a corner booth of The Stafordshire and you slowly nurse cup after cup of tea, for you don’t fancy getting loaded while Draco is being roasted alive. You keep ordering things you don’t really want to placate the pub staff, who notice you’ve been there for hours.

 

You’re absently poking at an uneaten basket of fish and chips with your fork when Hurricane Pansy comes crashing into the pub, loud and fast. “I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe it,” she says, stunned, but clearly happy.

 

She steals a chip and sits terribly close to you, allowing for the others to pile into the booth. Blaise is there, as promised, and takes the seat beside Pansy. Daphne wears an unreadable smile when she gives you a double air kiss, says “It’s good to see you, Theodore,” and takes her place on the opposite side of the booth. After some curt and polite greetings, Astoria and Vaisey (of all bloody people) take up the rest of the bench. It’s a veritable Slytherin reunion. There is an unmistakable air of hope and joy amongst them all, and they are ready to celebrate.

 

But not you. You won’t let go of the breath you’re holding until Draco can walk the streets of London a free man. Everybody is jovial, but nobody has said anything about a verdict. It’s much too soon for the Wizengamot to have reached a decision on such a high profile case.

 

Blaise fills you in as the clearly starving gang places their orders. If everyone feels good enough to bring themselves to eat, the situation can’t be all that bad.

 

“Potter took the stand as a witness,” Blaise reports, “He actually testified that Draco tried to save his life at Malfoy Manor.”

 

You stare at him, stunned, because you honestly can’t believe any of what Blaise had just said. Neither Draco, nor Potter had ever shown you anything in their character that would make you believe it.

 

But Pansy concurs. “Potter also said Draco seemed like he wanted to accept Dumbledore’s help in turning against The Dark Lord. Plus loads of other stuff that made Draco look like a wanker, frankly, but at least it didn’t paint him as a ruthless killer.”

 

“Draco might actually get acquitted,” Blaise adds, “At least, it’s looking that way.”

 

For the first time ever, you are thankful for that bespectacled git.

 

You can finally breathe normally for the first time all day. You could crumble into a pile of ravaged nerves and wrecked emotions, and just cry from the overwhelming sense of relief. In fact, you have to clandestinely dab at the corners of your eyes to catch the errant tears that manage to escape.

 

It almost doesn’t matter that Draco doesn’t want to see you ever again. As long as he’s free, you can find it easier to mourn the absolute loss of your friendship. But maybe, just maybe, you could even try to piece it back together.

 

Pints are doled out all around, even to Astoria, who you suspect isn’t old enough to drink. Blaise raises his glass and says, “To Draco.”

 

You raise your glass along with your former friends, who you realize never stopped being your friends. “To Draco,” you all say.

 

And you are inspired to add the Slytherin House motto, “Without cunning, there is no innovation. Without ambition, there is no accomplishment.”

 

To which they all reply heartily in unison, “Slytherin for life!”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to change the rating to M because of this chapter. Enjoy. 
> 
> Thank you to LadyLilyMalfoy for encouraging me to continue with this story.
> 
> This chapter was edited and reposted on 2/2/18 to better comply with the events in The Death of Draco Malfoy series by Colorfulstabwound, to which this is a companion piece.

It is later, on the evening of Draco’s trial, that you discover through Daphne, who always seems to know things nobody else is supposed to know, that Draco had been transferred to a temporary holding cell as the Wizengamot deliberates upon a verdict. Everyone suspects the sentence will come by tomorrow and fall in Draco’s favor. 

Still, the thought of Draco spending a night in prison conjures those old feelings of protectiveness.   You had run from him when you were at school, you had run from him in the courtroom, but you would not continue to run in his greatest hour of need.

If Daphne is the one friend who knows things, Blaise is the one friend who knows people. Somehow, he discovers where Draco is being held and flashes his gold and his clout to obtain a visitation grant. But when you and your friends arrive at the sterile, concrete detention facility, the guard tells you that Draco is refusing all visitors.

“That’s nonsense,” Daphne protests, “We’re his friends, not reporters hungry for a story. Surely he’s in need of our support right now.”

The guard insists firmly, “No visitors. I don’t care who you are.” Then he flashes a meaningful look at Blaise and adds, “I don’t care who you _know_.” This leads you to believe that Blaise’s contacts had reached this far, but had the inadvertent effect of alerting Draco that you all would be coming. Apparently, Draco continues to be an island. “The prisoner does not wish to receive any visitors other than his legal council.”

You all leave the detention facility disappointed and forlorn, and go your separate ways. But instead of going home, you linger by the door. You want Draco to know that you were there. Maybe it’s a selfish, futile attempt at exonerating yourself from your own guilt. Merlin knows it probably won’t offer Draco any comfort.

With a galleon slipped to the guard, a note scrawled on a scrap of parchment is delivered to Draco’s cell.

 

_Dear Draco,_

_I wasn’t there when you needed me, and I am sorry. I am here for you now._

_Yours,_

_Theodore_

 

For an hour, you wait in the vestibule for a reply you know won’t come.

When you return to the ruins of Luckington Manor, Helvetica greets you with a letter in her beak and your heart skips a beat. You snatch it from her too hastily for her liking, incurring a well-deserved nip, which stings much less than your disappointment upon opening the letter. It isn’t a reply from Draco.

 

_Theo,_

_If you’d rather not spend another night sleeping in the ashes, Parkinson Hall is a more comfortable alternative. Though I cannot promise you it will be any less dusty considering we lost our elf, I can assure you it is much less drafty. Plus, I have a bottle of Ogden’s Reserve that I’d rather not finish alone._

_Pansy_

You’re not stupid, and neither is Pansy. You read between the lines and give only slight pause before accepting her invitation. You’ve never been one for propriety anyway, and perhaps you’re just slightly bitter that Draco keeps pushing you away, bitter enough to forget you dislike Pansy Parkinson. Why should you care how bad it looks that Draco’s former best friend is spending the night with Draco’s former girlfriend on the eve prior to Draco’s sentencing?

A couple of drinks in, with nary an exchanged flirtation, you reconsider your dislike of Pansy.

The war has changed her. Her edges are sharper than ever and her inherent self-serving motives are more upfront, which should make her more detestable, but you rather like it. She’s honest. And you start to wonder if you ever really hated Pansy at all, or simply hated the fact that she curried Draco’s favor so fervently at school. Though, can you blame her for ingratiating herself? You are also guilty of once coveting Draco’s attention, though you never lost your self-respect trying to gain it.

Now that Pansy has recovered the self-respect that she had lost while ambling to become Draco’s girlfriend, you can’t hate her anymore. Without patronizing or infantilizing you, she has taken you in like the homeless foundling that you’ve become and she offered you top shelf firewhiskey, no less – hardly the act of the selfish, shallow girl you once deemed her to be.

Three drinks in and less distance between you on the drawing room sofa, you know for sure that you no longer harbor any animosity towards Pansy.

“You’re alright, Pans,” you muse, though you know she wasn’t trying to prove herself worthy of your friendship.

She rolls her eyes and snorts, “Thanks, Theo. You’re not such an arsehole after all.” You both laugh somberly.

After a long, comfortable silence punctuated with sips of whiskey, she smiles wistfully at you. “It’s funny how selective one’s memory can be.”

You raise an eyebrow with interest, gently urging her to go on.

“I had nearly forgotten that we weren’t always rivals,” she says, gazing off into the past with fond remembrance shining in her dark eyes. Then she looks at you, studying your quizzical expression. “You don’t remember, do you?” It is more of an amused assessment than a question. “I fancied you once.”

She reaches out to bridge the short distance between you and slowly combs her fingers through your hair. Always starved for affection, and made more amenable to it by alcohol, you easily succumb to her touch as the memory comes flooding back to you.

“…And I fancied you.”

 

You were fourteen, at the dawn of sexual awareness. Draco had always monopolized your thoughts and your time, but Pansy was the first person who made you forget Draco for a moment – in the moments she would cross her legs and her skirt would ride up to reveal her bare thigh, in the moments she would tousle your hair and giggle in your ear, in the moments her shoulder would rest comfortably close to yours when she sat next to you.

Concurrently, your thoughts of Draco had begun to stray from platonic, and you realized that Draco’s smirk and the regal slope of his neck would elicit the same feelings Pansy’s flirtation would elicit.

For a very brief time, there was this unspoken harmony amongst the three of you while these feelings were burgeoning beyond your naïve understanding. Innocent mutual exploration of sexual attraction manifested in subtle ways – the brush of hands, lounging in close proximity, playing with hair, eyes lingering on curves.

 

“I thought I could have you both,” Pansy muses, as if peering into your memory as it comes out of hiding. “Maybe I could have, if we weren’t so Slytherin – so competitive.”

 

She had fancied you. She had fancied Draco. You had fancied them both. The problem was, Draco did not like to share.

Balmy spring days found the three of you in a particular sunken meadow on Hogwarts grounds nearing the end of fourth year. It was warm enough to shed heavy woolen robes and jumpers, warm enough to roll up shirtsleeves. Basking in the sun with your eyes closed, you played an unspoken game. Hands wandered meekly, blindly searching for bare skin to explore.

But once Draco ceased to be the center of attention, it stopped being a game Draco wanted to play. Because games without clear rules did not suit him, especially when Draco was not the one making the rules. When he saw your hand sneaking up Pansy’s skirt along her thigh, the game no longer suited him.

And when the game no longer suited him, he created his own. Draco pitted you and Pansy against one another in a competition for his attention ensuring that he was the only one either of you desired. He was so good at plying you with enough affection and favor to make you fear losing him to Pansy, and you suspected he had been doing the same to her.

 

“But then again, he never really fancied me, you know,” Pansy says, suddenly becoming somber, as she stares at the darkness through the window of the sitting room.

“That’s not true,” you reply reflexively, though you’re not entirely sure. Draco had never told you what he thought of Pansy, and perhaps that was by grand design.

“I’m not stupid. I see it now,” Pansy says without malice as she fills her glass, more judiciously this time, before offering to top off your own glass of firewhiskey, which you politely decline. “He only ever touched me when you were around to either see it or hear about it later. After you left, he grew cold to me. At first, I blamed it on stress. But soon I realized, it wasn’t just stress. He didn’t want me.”

“He didn’t want me either,” you admit. “I tried to kiss him, you know. Summer before fifth year. He stopped talking to me after that.”

Pansy looks perplexed by this. “ _That’s_ why he stopped talking to you? Because you _kissed_ him?” Then she grows quiet and stares mournfully into her now empty glass. She does a commendable job of holding back her emotions, but her tears escape despite the unaffected tone of her voice. “Draco Malfoy certainly has a talent for breaking hearts, doesn’t he? He makes you think you’re so special – that you really mean something to him. And then he just… grows bored of you and tosses you aside like rubbish.”

“Yet we continue to love him more deeply than ever… Talented, indeed.” It is the first time you have allowed yourself to say these words out loud, let alone admit them to yourself.

 

You never stopped loving Draco.

You know this to be true, evident in the way the words seize your heart firmly enough to make it stop beating. You wanted to hate him. He probably hates you. But you will never be able to shake that claim he laid on your soul when he let you into his life.

 

Just as your words threaten to crush your heart all over again, those same words make Pansy falter and crack. She lets out a quiet sob and buries her face into your shoulder. “Fuck Draco Malfoy,” she squeaks out hoarsely as she cries, “Fuck that beautiful fucking bastard.”

You put an arm around her and pet her hair, consoling her the way your mother would console you. You’ve never been in this role before, and it feels oddly comforting to you in turn. Perhaps you find consolation in the fact that you’re not alone in your heartache.

“Fuck that beautiful fucking bastard,” you concur softly, and then add half jokingly, “…Don’t we wish.”

“Gods, yes,” Pansy manages to chuckle tearfully. “That time on the Hogwarts express was the last time we...,” she trails off, and you inwardly thank her for not getting into details.

You remark with only superficial bitterness, “I had just managed to un-see that incident. Thanks for the reminder, Pans.”

"Yes, and I hate to disappoint you further by letting you know that was the  _only_ time," she admits further.

 

“Oh….”  You play it off as casually as you can, which is not casual at all.  You're much too pleased with this revelation to hide it well and too much can be read into that subtle inflection of your voice.  Pansy is quite skilled at reading into things.

“Yes. _Oh_ ,” she says, and exchanges a knowing look with you after wiping away the remnants of her tears.

 

You are both coming to terms with the fact that it had not been an accident when you had glanced over at the couple sitting across from you in a compartment aboard the Hogwarts Express, and saw Pansy’s hand disappear beneath the coat draped over Draco’s lap. He made sure you saw it when he and Pansy slipped into the loo together to continue their sexual encounter in a more private setting. Draco had orchestrated this. He had used you both for his amusement, and you find an odd sense of camaraderie in this.

 

You both grow quiet. You don’t want things to become awkward, so you half-heartedly joke, “Well, was it good at least?”

Pansy shrugs. “I’ve had better.” 

You both chuckle. And because you can’t help yourself, since you’re perhaps a little drunk, you ask, “No seriously. Have you?”

“Obviously,” she replies loftily, “A girl’s got to get her thrills somehow if her boyfriend isn’t giving it to her.”

You spend the rest of the night exchanging stories of sexual encounters and exploits. You are pleased to know that, while she remained hopelessly in love with Draco, Pansy had enough self-respect to satisfy her needs elsewhere, which makes her story a lot less sad.

You’re amused to discover that Pansy had lost her virginity to one Dashiel Norrington, who happened to be the younger of Rosaline’s two half brothers. And Pansy is amused that you are as well-versed in oral sex with men as she is, though she insists that you are the more blatant cock slut between you.

Your skin grows warm from the whiskey in your veins and the salacious nature of your conversation. Pansy appears to be affected similarly, evident in the rosy glow upon her cheeks, which you’re finding increasingly attractive. The invitation to her bed is not an altogether unwelcome one.

You haven’t been with a woman since Bali. After a long string of sexual encounters with men, you were beginning to think that you didn’t need to bother with the so-called _fairer sex_. But nestled between Pansy’s thighs, the wet silk of her knickers so hot against your cock, you remember how good it can be.

A man's hard lines and firm breadth and carnal scent does inexplicable things to you. But that doesn’t preclude you from reveling in the softness of a woman’s breasts cradled in your palms, or the slick suppleness of her sex acquiescing to your fingers, or the wanton soprano of her moans against your parted lips.

But Pansy suddenly stiffens and rebukes your touch. “Wait…,” she says.

You panic, and worry that you’d misread all of her signals and had taken things in the wrong direction.

“I’m sorry. Should we stop?” you ask as she shrinks away from you, and you get this sick feeling in your stomach that you have just inadvertently done something very wrong.

“Yes… Yes we should,” she replies, looking slightly shaken as she searches the bed for her discarded clothes.

You flounder to apologize. “I’m really sorry, I thought you wanted… well, I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought you wanted. You clearly don’t want it and I’m sorry if I forced--”

“Theo. Shut up,” she interrupts, not angry, but impatient with your dramatic apology. “Don’t make this weird. You didn’t force me to do anything. I wanted it. Hell, I _still_ want to fuck you, but I’m just not prepared to go there. It would _devastate_ Draco if he found out. And if you still love him as much as I still love him, you’ll put aside your own selfish needs. He’s a fucking bastard, but he doesn’t deserve this.”

You heave a deep sigh and rake your fingers through your hair to collect yourself. “You’re right… It would be in really poor taste if we do this.”

Pansy snorts, teasing you with her sarcasm, “And everyone knows what an upstanding pillar of society you are, Theodore Nott. Wouldn’t want to damage your reputation.”

“Fuck you,” you jibe as you playfully hurl a pillow towards her. “I’m backing off because it’s wrong. Not because I’m worried people would think it’s tacky. I don’t care what everyone thinks of me.”

“Right. You’ve only ever cared what Draco thinks,” she points out astutely.

“I don’t care what--”

“Bollocks,” she scoffs as she rolls off the bed with a handful of clothes, and shuffles towards her _en suite_. She’s fully returned to her flippant self. “I’ll be in the bath fucking myself thinking about having a three-way with you and that hot Australian surfer bloke with the massive cock. Be a doll and refrain from coming on my duvet if you plan to do the same.”

You fall back into the nest of down-filled comforters and pillows with a deep, cleansing exhale as you reflect upon what just happened. How you always manage to get yourself into these situations is beyond your comprehension – how you always poise yourself to hurt Draco when your intentions are the opposite. You just nearly fucked the Love of Your Life’s ex girlfriend the night before said Love of Your Life could potentially be sentenced to spend his life in Azkaban. It doesn’t get any more fucked up than this… well, if you’d actually followed through, it certainly could become more seriously fucked, but nevertheless.

 

When Pansy finally emerges from her bath looking sated and sleepy, she finds you on the bed with a tray of sandwiches and herbal tea, waiting patiently for her. Well, not quite so patiently. You had already availed yourself of half the sandwiches and nearly finished your tea. She settles next to you in her fluffy, pink bathrobe and rests her head on your shoulder as she tiredly nibbles on a sandwich.

She sighs, and it sounds more weary than content, though the words following the sigh would confirm the latter. “I’m glad you came back. I don’t hate you nearly as much as I remembered.”

You chuckle softly and return the sentiment - half of it, at least. “I don’t hate you nearly as much either.”

You won’t tell her that you don’t intend on staying very long. She doesn’t need to hear that right now. What she needs in this moment, what Draco needs, and what you need, is each other - Friends, with whom to weather the storm that is still raining down on you all harder than any of you are willing to admit.

 

You spend the night, quite innocently, in Pansy’s bed.

 

The news hits you unexpectedly the next morning as you are hurriedly dressing to return to the courts. The Wizengamot had come to a verdict in the small hours of the night and had reconvened bright and early before very many spectators could descend upon The Ministry. They likely anticipated it to be a very unpopular decision, and didn’t need to flaunt it too publicly, though you're fairly certain the throng of reporters had camped out at the courts so as not to miss the sentencing.

The word comes, not from the morning edition of The Daily Prophet, but from Daphne and Blaise, who show up at Pansy’s door. 

“It’s not what you think,” you reply defensively to the raised eyebrow that Daphne gives you upon finding you at Pansy’s house, half dressed, at an obscenely early hour of the morning.

“I should hope not,” Daphne mutters under her breath, not trying very hard to keep your hostess from hearing her harsh assessment, “Honestly, Theo. Pansy? You should know better.”

You and Pansy both roll your eyes. You know Daphne well enough to understand that she meant to disparage Pansy rather than admonish you for any perceived slight against Draco. Daphne was always so judgmental and Pansy was never good enough for her dearest friend – that being Draco, not you. And for that matter, you were also never good enough for Draco in Daphne’s eyes.

Pansy impatiently pulls the news out of Blaise, who announces cheerfully, “Full acquittal. Not guilty.”

Pansy gasps and covers her mouth, her eyes wide and shining with impending tears.

“All charges?” you ask, unable to believe it, certain that there must be a catch.

“Yes. Conspiracy to commit treason, attempted murder, unlawful imprisonment of a minor, etcetera, etcetera – not guilty on all twenty four charges,” Blaise assures you.

You furrow your brow with confusion around the last of the numerous charges. “Unlawful imprisonment of a minor?”

“Luna Lovegood was kidnapped and kept in the basement of Malfoy Manor for a few months,” Daphne explains. “Luna gave written testimony that Draco was as much a prisoner of Malfoy Manor as she was.”

Your brow only furrows more deeply out of disbelief. “Excuse me, _what_?”

“You see what happens when you leave? You miss all the kidnapping and torture and murder,” Pansy jokes darkly. “This is why you can never leave, Theo.”

But the way she says it, and the way she looks at you, makes you think she must understand you now – why you left rather than be privy to the depths of Hell she experienced. And perhaps there is also a tinge of painful bitterness in those words, for you had been the only one to escape.

Now that you know Pansy had a relationship with Dashiel, maybe she was offered the same protection that the Norringtons offered you, and maybe she refused it so that she could go her own way. And her way was to stay steadfastly loyal to her friends.

 

One day you will ask her what happened during the war. And maybe you’ll even be able to hear it from Draco some day. But that day is not today. Today is not about going back to the war. Today is about walking away from it. 

Walking away from it, free.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter after binge re-reading "The Death of Draco Malfoy" by Colorfulstabwound, which stands as the most moving and brilliantly written post-war Draco story I've ever read. It never ceases to inspire me. Love you, bestie - your words give me life.

You have packed away everything you could salvage, or rather, everything you deemed worthy of salvaging, from the wreckage of Luckington Manor. The boxes are shrunken and shoved into every corner of the estate stables that had been empty of its animals for over a decade. It stands as a physical representation of how you have managed to compartmentalize that part of your history – the history of a childhood half-spent bathed in the warm glow of your mother’s love, and half-spent in the cold anguish of her absence and your father’s oppressive presence.

You won’t take much of anything with you. Not a memento of your mother, not a token of your heritage – not even the stationery seal to mark your letters. You will, however, take Helvetica when you leave this place for good, because you cannot stand to abandon yet another childhood thing you loved.

 

Pansy finds you at her door with the same rucksack you left home with before the war. “There’s somewhere I need to go.”

She eyes your overstuffed bag and only vaguely hides the disappointment in her expression. She forces a wry grin, though the words come out more sorrowfully than she likely intended, judging from the snort she tacks onto the end. “I was wondering when you were going to give up on getting onto that island.” 

The island that is Draco Malfoy has remained unreachable in the weeks that have trickled by quietly since the trial. You can’t take it personally – he hasn’t even spoken to Daphne or Blaise, so it likely had very little to do with you. Or so you tell yourself to escape from the guilt that still presses upon you like a pinched nerve that causes pain so chronic it becomes your natural, uncomfortable state of being.

“I don’t know if I can manage this on my own,” you admit.

She likely ascertains from your somber demeanor that the trip you’re about to embark upon is hardly another one of your capricious adventures. She takes a deep, contemplative breath, revealing her apprehension. You don’t blame her. You can barely bring yourself to ask what she likely already expects you to say.

“I’ll go with you,” she says, without you even having to give her specifics, and it is a testament to how close you’ve become in the past weeks. “But I can’t promise you that I’ll be a fun travel companion.”

“We’ll bring Old Man Ogden as a third,” you say as you lift the flap of your bag to reveal the amber neck of a whiskey bottle. “He’ll be the fun one.” 

“I need to go the old way. No portkey,” she stipulates, not demandingly. “I need some time.” You are asking a lot of her, and you will hardly object to a day’s journey if it means she’ll be with you.

 

It is September, and you are boarding a train to the Scottish Highlands that roughly follows the same route as the Hogwarts Express. That particular train isn’t running this year. There isn’t much of a school for students to return to yet.

You know that it is probably too soon to ask Pansy to return to the scene of a war that devastated her whole life. It’s still so raw, so recent. But that is exactly why you need her to go now, before she has a chance to box away all the memories. And in a way, she needs this too. She needs to speak the words before letting them scatter like ash to the winds of history, before they become distorted by time.

You arrive in Edinburgh at night. It’s the first time you’ve seen the city and it charms you right away with its seamless blend of old and new. You decompress in a trendy-looking café called The Elephant, seated in a busy part of the city in the shadow of a castle perched on a nearby hill. You and Pansy sit amongst muggle university students and artists while sipping tea and nibbling on elephant-shaped biscuits.

It amuses you how well you and she blend into this scene and wonder if its something you should seriously consider doing – pulling Pansy out of the wizarding world to make roots here in the muggle world. It’s not like she has much of anything left in London, other than a mansion in disrepair and a mother in a mental institution. But that’s not your choice to make, and you know it isn’t fair to whisk her away, only to abandon her in Edinburgh once Scotland (or Pansy) becomes tiresome.

After a sleepless night spent at a hostel, you know that Pansy is ill suited for your frugal nomadic lifestyle, and any fleeting thoughts of making her a more permanent travel companion flies out the window with the bone-chilling draft.

  

The next morning, you find breakfast and a functional floo at a wizard public house. It doesn’t go unnoticed that Pansy has not touched her food. 

“Ready?” you ask her as you take a final sip of strong coffee and drop some gold on the table.

She shrugs her shoulders as she continues to contemplate her plate of eggs with no intention of partaking of it. “As ready as can be expected,” she says noncommittally.

You gently take her hand and whisper, “You can change your mind. You don’t have to go with me.”

Her eyes flash to yours with a fury you had wondered still existed there. “But I do. Nobody else is going to do this. Not Blaise. Certainly not Daphne. And you _need_ to do this.” That familiar bitterness rasps her voice and sharpens her glare. “You _need_ to know what happened when you left.”

You feel like a small, scolded child when you release her hand and give a small nod.

  

A knot begins to form in your stomach as you step through the floo and find yourself in another wizard pub, this one is somewhat familiar to you. The Three Broomsticks is as vacant as the town of Hogsmeade itself, Madam Rosemerta is nowhere in sight. You step out into the street where the shuttered storefronts are devoid of patrons and the still-broken windows of abandoned businesses are but a hint of what happened here. Already, it’s an eerie sight.

It is not quite a ghost town. The smoke coming from the chimneys of buildings are an indication that life persists here, though hidden in shadows of lingering fear and mourning. Madam Rosemerta’s voice follows you and you whip around to find her standing in the doorway of her pub.

“There is no justice,” she says, her voice shaking with anguish. “You lot are free to walk the streets like nothing ever happened. As if you had no part in destroying lives.”

You are only mildly surprised that she remembers who you are. Or perhaps, she just knows _what_ you and Pansy are. You will always be Slytherins, and it will be the curse you continue to bear for your whole lives. You are guilty by association.

“I’m sorry,” you manage weakly. “We never meant for any of this to happen. We were just too scared to fight it.” Perhaps you’re apologizing more on Draco’s behalf than your own, for you know that he will never have to pay for the crimes he committed against this woman.

Pansy takes your arm, urging you to move on as she whispers, “Don’t. Just let it go.”

You both continue on. Madam Rosemerta calls out in your wake, “How dare you? How _dare_ you come here? Shame on you. Shame on your families.”

You walk faster, and Pansy has to jog to catch up with you. “Fucking cunt,” she mutters to herself. When you look at her, she’s wiping away angry tears. “She has no idea…”

Pansy trails off, but you know what she’s thinking. The courts may not have convicted any of you, but the entire wizarding world has sentenced you to exile. The children of Death Eaters will never be accepted back into wizarding society. You wonder how any of you will ever be able to live or work in the wizarding world. It is ironic that the pure blood separatist ideals held by your parents would later force you all to integrate with the muggles they so detested.

  

When you leave what had once been the cozy flank of thatched roofed buildings and step out of the town, you see the castle looming up on the hill in the distance. That first sight smacks you hard across the face, such that you stop in your tracks and wonder if what you’re seeing is real. You quickly avert you eyes because you feel like you are somehow witness to something sacred being violated. It feels sickeningly akin to the horror of watching your mother being murdered, and as such, triggers a violent anxiety attack.

The shape of the castle and the mountain it is perched upon had been so familiar to you – unbreakable and beautiful and constant, just as your mother had been unbreakable and beautiful and constant. What you see before you is an abomination – the skyline should not look like this, so blackened and misshapen and befouled. It is just like looking at your mother’s dead face.

You drop to your knees and hyperventilate. “I can’t… I can’t…” you wheeze.

Pansy falls to your side and, despite the comforting circles she’s making on your back with her palm, she’s growling at you with gritted teeth. “You _must_. You _have to_. Stand up and look at it. Look at what happened to us. Look at what they did to us.”

You’re shaking and crying. Pansy is also crying, but not nearly as hysterical as you are. You insist weakly, “I don’t want to look.”

Pansy takes you by the shoulders and shakes you once, hard enough to rattle your head, hard enough to force you out of your blinding panic. “Look at what you left behind, Theodore.”

“Why?” you beseech in a tearful whine.

You no longer know why you felt the need to visit the ruins of Hogwarts. You think that maybe Pansy is subconsciously making you a witness so that you can suffer along with her.

Or perhaps she is projecting her anger upon you because the person she blames will never be held accountable. The wreckage of the once great castle is a symbol of the lives that were ruined in the name of Harry Potter – the atrocities of war that The Chosen One will never acknowledge. Harry Fucking Potter probably isn’t even aware of the ripples of devastation he caused, and so people like Pansy will never receive reparations because Harry Fucking Potter never apologizes for the damage he does.

  

She collapses with her arms around you, somehow giving you comfort while also taking comfort in your closeness. “Why? Because I can’t carry this by myself. Because every time I close my eyes at night, far away in London, I still see it as if I’m here in the thick of it. And nobody else, not Draco, not Blaise, and least of all Daphne, will admit that they see it too. I feel like the sole survivor, and I can’t bear it all by myself.” 

You already have debilitating survivors’ guilt, and you weren’t even a witness to the war. You cannot imagine how horrible it must feel for Pansy, or any of your friends. You don’t have to deal with the memories that have scarred their minds, or the atrocities that have torn their souls. But you are united in the commonality of your loss.

This was _your_ Hogwarts too.

By the time you both catch your breath, no longer is Pansy so belligerent, and no longer are you feeling like your are seeing your mother’s death all over again. You slowly stand up together and you take her hand. You close your eyes and take a deep breath to steady yourself. The air still smells of reckless magic and burnt embers and death.

When you open your eyes, you’re ready. You walk up the hill together and face what you left behind.

  

As the castle grows near, you can see that a small crew is working on clearing the rubble and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed that you won’t see the full extent of the wreckage. But what you do see is enough. You can hardly come to terms with the fact that a hallowed bastion of learning and tradition was the site of one of the most bloody battles in wizarding history. It feels like you’re walking through an ancient battleground, such is the nature of the ruined old stone and brick of the castle – not a war that happened only a few months ago.

It doesn’t truly hit home until you see parts of the castle that were inherent to your own experience, or rather, until you see the stark absence of those parts.

The glass houses are all shattered, only the metal frame remains as a skeletal reminder of where you and Draco rolled up your shirtsleeves and got dirty together as you dug your fingers into pots of cool, fertile soil.

The covered bridge across which you’d race against Blaise is completely gone, leaving a giant gap between the castle and what had once been an adjoining hill – like a hole in your heart.  

The astronomy tower upon which you and Rosaline had kissed is now a blue vacancy in the sky.

The grass on the gently sloping knoll is scorched black, and you can see distinct lines of violence gouging through the ground where powerful magic rampaged. You can no longer distinguish which patch of grass had been the one where you, Pansy, and Draco practically made-out without ever joining lips.

For her part, Pansy is doing a remarkable job of keeping it together while she gives you a walking tour of atrocities as she tells the tale of what happened here in stark honesty like only Pansy can. Perhaps telling her story is cathartic for her. It seems like she is cleansed for it, however awful and foul the words are – words like _his arm was hexed off here_ , and _she took a jinx to the chest right over there,_ and _they blew this up and everybody with it_.

Because the Slytherins had been evacuated at some point during the battle, you know that Pansy’s story is incomplete. She can only tell you bits and pieces of things from the people who stayed, or who got out much later than the evacuation.

Pansy shows you where Astoria, Daphne’s sister, claims to have been trapped under rubble while going back for Draco. She was later rescued by a young Death Eater. Astoria had later testified on his behalf, though you know it had been to no avail, for all the surviving Death Eaters, other than Draco, were convicted and sent to Azkaban, Lucius Malfoy included.

Pansy points out a rough approximation of where Vincent was consumed by his own conjured fire, according to Gregory’s still-fuzzy recollection. You still cannot comprehend that Vincent is actually dead. It doesn’t feel real. But you know it is true, evident in the shell left behind in the wake of Vincent’s death, for you saw his death in Greg’s eyes. 

You amble down to the lake and you visit the place where Professor Snape’s body was found. Pansy sits upon the dock leading to the boathouse, gazing out into the black water with reverence for who you know to be her favorite professor. One day you will learn that Severus Snape had been instrumental in Draco’s survival, and you will revisit this spot to pay homage to his sacrifice.

 

You’re shuffling through the open pit that had once been The Great Hall when the familiar gravelly voice of Argus Filch rasps from behind you. “Come back to gawk and gloat, have you?”

You have exhausted your emotional energy and can’t be bothered to bristle at his presumptuous remark. “We’ve come to pay our respects to those who were lost,” you admit.

Filch narrows his eyes at you, as if he expects you to laugh snidely. Your lack of sarcasm seems to genuinely confuse him. He purses his lips and hobbles on, mumbling something about not getting in the way of the construction wizards. You wonder if Filch feels much of anything but inconvenienced by the mess.

 

It is in the Slytherin dorms that you break down and cry again. “It’s not fair… It’s not fucking fair…”

Miraculously, or perhaps because of its location underground, the Slytherin dungeons are exactly the way you left them.

Those that should have lost the most did not lose anything at all, at least superficially. The unscathed veneer of the Slytherin dormitory stands as a reflection of yourself – what the war did not physically destroy on the outside, had hollowed-out completely. The entirely of Slytherin House had been decimated. Not a single one of you came out of the war whole. You are all broken in some way.

  

In your old room, your bed is still made. The bedcovers of the other four posters look like they’d just been vacated this morning, as if your old mates had woken up and had gone to class today. You sit on what you remember to be Draco’s bed. You pick up his pillow, hold it to your chest, and bury your face in it.

“It still smells like him…,” you muse quietly. The familiar scent of his shampoo wrenches your heart to pieces. You remember being close enough to him to know his smell, yet you barely remember how it felt.

“He’s not dead, Theo,” Pansy murmurs, sounding exhausted right down past the bone to her soul, “Don’t talk of Draco as if he is.”

“But isn’t he? Isn’t he dead for all intents and purposes?” you propose, feeling that truth as starkly as the shards of glass stuck in the grass beneath the greenhouses.

“Only if we allow ourselves to forget him,” she remarks distantly. From the hollow sound of her voice, you know that she needs to forget him. She needs to let him go if she wants to carry on and piece her life back together. She needs to let Draco Malfoy die.

Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

 

You leave Hogsmeade together, but when you reach Edinburgh, Pansy goes on to London without you. She leaves you in Scotland with your journal and all of her memories to fill it with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I emerged from a school building on 4th Avenue and 11th street in Manhattan. I had spent the whole morning resolutely NOT looking out the window. I couldn't look. I didn't want to look. Finally, when I looked up at the blue sky, I saw one of the twin towers engulfed in smoke, and the other was simply gone... just, gone. I drew upon that experience to write this.


End file.
